The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, stressed the need for the national debate on the Treaty of Nice to be conducted in a way that informed people and did not seek to foment confusion and put across an air of unreality, which, unfortunately, had dominated the course of the last referendum campaign.
Taking issue with statements made by Danish MEP Mr Jens Peter Bonde, the Minister said the idea that an accession of 10 additional states to the EU would be possible without ratification of the Nice Treaty had no political reality at all. Nice was about making the necessary institutional arrangements for enlargement to take place.
Judging by the prediction of the European Commissioner charged with responsibility for negotiating with the applicant countries, it now seemed likely that the EU would be enlarged to 25 members. It was time that we did not give credence to views that were not shared by any EU government, Mr Cowen emphasised.
No head of the European Council was going to allow an enlargement to take place, or permit the instruments of accession to be lodged in the EU institutions, without ratification of the treaty. Anyone who suggested otherwise was not living in the real world. It was time that this sort of nonsense was removed from the very important work that the National Forum on Europe was doing.
Anyone who would suggest that it was not in Ireland's interests or that it was not our political destiny to be a full participative member of the EU going forward had, in his opinion, a very naive and dangerous understanding of how our economy worked and what impact we could have in a globalising world, where we shared, initiated and contributed to the formulation of common policies under the EU aegis, which would provide not just prospects for prosperity but for the maintenance of security in the world.
It was now becoming clear that up to 10 states would be ready for accession by the end of next year, so how could anyone suggest that it was in Ireland's interests to be the brake on enlargement, which we would be if we did not facilitate this process.
The Gothenburg European Council conclusions made it clear that the Nice Treaty was not up for negotiation.
"We have to use the forum as a means of trying to deal with the concerns that were raised in the last campaign."